Jordanian Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party

The Jordanian Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party (JASBP) is a Ba'athist political party in Jordan that was founded in 1951. The party had its roots in discussions between students and professors at universities across Jordan, in which they discussed the ideology of the newly-established Ba'ath Party. The regional branch was formed at Kerak by a group of teachers, and the party also spread to the West Bank, which was occupied by Jordan until 1967. In 1956, the party was legalized, and the Ba'ath Party found its strongholds in Irbid and Amman on the East Bank and in Jerusalem and Nablus on the West Bank. The party had an estimated 1,000 members by 1966, and it was active in the pro-Iraqi Arab Liberation Front. The party financed thousands of scholarships to universities in Ba'athist Iraq during the 1990s, but the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003 bankrupted the party, which also lost several of its followers. The party suffered financially and was criticized by religious Jordanians for its secularism, while others grew weary of Arab nationalism.